Rival IQ raises $860,000 to help marketers keep tabs on competitors

Want to track every move of your competitors, while gaining insights about your own business?

Rival IQ wants to help, and the Seattle startup has just pulled in $860,000 in fresh capital to continue to develop online tools that provide intel on what competitors are saying and sharing.

“Online marketing is hard — and getting harder — and marketers need tools that help them know where to focus and how to improve,” says co-founder T.A. McCann. “Rival IQ provides a comprehensive tool that helps them understand where they rank, how they compare and who are the leaders in their competitive landscape.”

T.A. McCann

Investors in the seed round include Paul Allen’s Vulcan; Seattle super angel Rudy Gadre; David Cohen of TechStars; marketing consultant Jay Baer and others. It plans to close out the seed round at about $1 million.

“At Rival IQ we are on a mission to help marketers be more effective and efficient with their online marketing efforts,” said co-founder and CEO John Clark. “This funding will allow us to grow the team and accelerate product development efforts in pursuit of this mission.”

Clark is a former executive at GridPoint and V2Green, while McCann has been involved in a number of Seattle startups, most recently Gist which sold to BlackBerry. Other founders include Seth Pollack and Seth Bridges, both of whom previously worked at GridPoint and V2Green.

At this stage, about 50 companies are paying for Rival IQ’s services. The cost ranges from $99 per month to $399 per month.

Rival IQ also has partnered with GeekWire to provide analysis for the GeekWire 200 list, monitoring the digital activities of each of the startups on the list. You can get a better sense of that analysis in this blog post from Clark.

John Cook is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a veteran reporter and the longest-serving journalist on the Pacific Northwest tech startup beat. Follow him @johnhcook and email john@geekwire.com.